CHAPTER 34

 

 

 

#67: GRACE

"Not Over Yet"

from the album If I Could Fly

Released: October 1996

 

 

It's always the unobtrusive ones you have to watch. By 1976 glam had rusted and Mud, free of RAK Records and Chinn and Chapman, needed a hit, so they opted for disco. Like most disco hits of the period, "Shake It Down" would probably clear the dancefloor now - too slow for 21st century standards - but it aims to persuade rather then hector (even though its lyrical attitudes firmly frame the song within its intended period) and if you get past the shrieking "El Bimbo" synth-guitars - which I'm not sure I'd want to do; I can imagine Earl Brutus covering the song - the record possesses a glacial patience, a subtle swing, even with its rhetorical pause and post-Tremeloes party time whoops, and a universal spread facilitated by producer Pip Williams' string and horn arrangements.

It actually pointed the way forward - to the next century - more than most 1976 records, particularly when you realise that the song was written by two members of the band, Ray Stiles and, crucially Rob Davis. Mud didn't really get beyond 1976 as a commercial proposition - there was just one more UK hit, an odd "That's What An Extra Doz Does" reimaging of "Lean On Me" - and Davis had some frustrated years writing songs for, among other artists, the Tremeloes. Eventually, if accidentally, he met Paul Oakenfold, recalled the "Shake It Down" vibe to active service and turned to dance music.

This would prove particularly profitable for Davis in the early part of the current century, when songs such as "Toca's Miracle," "Groovejet" and "Can't Get You Out Of My Head," all of which he co-wrote, went to number one and not just in Britain. But we were already aware that Davis was shaking it down again in the nineties. "Not Over Yet," which he co-authored with Oakenfold and Mike Wyzgowski, remains an extraordinary pop record, one of its decade's finest. Not for the last time, Davis would summon the spirit of "Magic Fly" by Space - a big hit just over a year after "Shake It Down" - and glide; Grace was an appropriate band name.

The song is a neonlit artery extending from "Dido's Lament"; the singer does not want her lover to go, is desperate to hold onto them, and therefore to life. Dominique Atkins, who is the main singer, radiates premature Purcellian grief ("Remember me/So tenderly"), but answers her own voice with her projected subconscious ("'Cause I can see through you," "You still want me - don't you?" - at half the bpm of the song's main thrust). My goodness, I think she's even ready to fight back.